In 1842 the German-American composer Anthony Heinrich had an opportunity to play his composition The War of the Elements and the Thundering of Niagara for President John Tyler at the White House (things were different then). In 1832 when the students at Harvard petitioned to add classes in music, the faculty voted the idea down, considering music unsuited to a college curriculum. Music was either functional, for ceremonies or dances, or it was entertainment. That is akin to substituting a Hank Williams song, guitars and all, for a Verdi aria. Opera was a popular theater idiom, well-known operas being produced in highly “adapted” versions, in which, for instance, Italian arias were replaced by popular British ballads. The distinction between classical and popular hardly existed the touring virtuoso was practically unknown concerts were rare, and where they did occur they were local events, sporadic, haphazard, and eclectic, mixing a potpourri of glees, popular songs, folk songs, operatic arias, symphonies, concertos, and dance tunes.
It is hard to imagine just how different the musical culture of early nineteenth-century America was from ours today.
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